The latest film to be considered flop in my eyes is Army of The Dead; gaining only about $1m from a budget of $70-90m. Another flop would be The Room, gaining less than $2,000 at the box office with a budget of $6m.
However when movies make more at the box office than what their budget was they are still considered flops. How much more money does it have to make for it to be considered a success?
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The cost of making and distributing a film is not just the budget. The budget is just the filming and editing and whatnot. A large part of the costs of making a film is marketing and distribution and things like that which are not included in the budget. So if I make a movie with a budget of $40 million dollars and spend $10 million on marketing I need to make $50 million to break even, even though the budget is just $40 million.
In addition when you buy a ticket the studio doesn’t get all of that money, some of that ticket cost goes to the movie theater. So in order for me the studio to make $50 million (budget+marketing costs) the film needs to make more than $50 million in ticket costs.
There is a very general rule I’ve heard that, when you account for marketing and distribution, miscellaneous other costs, and the cut that the theater gets, a film has to make roughly twice it’s budget at the box office to break even.
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